The Catherine the Great Egg, also
known as Grisaille Egg, and Pink Cameo Egg, is made of quatre-couleur
gold, pink grisaille and opaque white enamel, portrait diamonds,
rose-cut diamonds, seed pearls and velvet lining. The Surprise
(lost), a mechanical sedan chair, was made of gold, enamel and
probably diamonds.

Picture courtesy Hillwood, Estate, Museum & Gardens

Henrik Wigström, Fabergé's
last head work master, created this Egg for Nicholas II to present
to his mother, Maria Feodorovna, on Easter morning in 1914. Vasilii
Zuiev painted the two rectangular panels in "camaieu" rose enamel
with miniature allegorical scenes of the arts and sciences
after French artist François Boucher.
According to a letter from Maria Feodorovna to her sister, Queen
Alexandra of England, the surprise in this Egg was a mechanical
sedan chair, carried by two blackamoors, with Catherine the Great
seated inside. To feature Catherine the
Great, who prided herself on being a patron of the arts and sciences,
as part of the surprise is certainly in keeping with this elaborate
Egg's style and imagery.

Background information

This Egg may best represent the height of Fabergé's
career, expressions in miniature of the life of Imperial privilege.
It was kept at Maria's favorite Anichkov Palace and it was inspired
by the opulent embellishments of the palace interior, where many
of the ceilings are painted en grisaille.
According to the letter from Maria Feodorovna to her sister, Queen Alexandra
of England, the surprise was incredibly beautiful: "Mr.
Fabergé himself has brought me this most beautiful egg. Inside is a
sedan chair carried by two blackamoors with Catherine the Great in it, wearing
a little crown on her head. You wind it up and then the blackamoors
walk: it is an unbelievably beautiful and superbly fine piece of work. Fabergé
is the greatest genius of our time. I also told him: "Vous êtes un génie incomparable" (you are a genius beyond compare).

By the time Armand Hammer acquired the Egg in 1930
from the Antikvariat, the surprise had
been lost. The "sedan chair" on the
picture seen below, is not the surprise of Catherine Egg.

(Snowman, the Art of Karl Fabergé, 1953)

For a long time it was thought that the mechanical chair (ex Charles Clore Collection) could be the surprise from the Catherine the Great Egg. However when the Manager of the Hillwood Museum came with the Egg to the New York auction of the chair, it was a big disappointment to everyone that the surprise did not fit into the Egg en therefore was nót the long lost surprise.

In 1927 sold as one of the ten Imperial Eggs
to the Hammer Galleries in New York. 1931 bought by Eleanor Barzin
as birthday present for her mother, Marjorie
Merriweather Post. 1973 Collection of the late Marjorie Merriweather
Post, willed to the Hillwood Museum, Washington,
D.C., United States.

The stand to the Egg is not original. On the image below you can see the Egg as it was advertised by Armand Hammer in the 1930's.